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When my best friend Stella* texted to ask if I\u2019d like to tag along with her and some mates on a night out, I was ready to say no.<\/p>\n
For one thing, it was utterly miserable weather. Worse yet, we were stuck in the fear-inducing thick of our second-year university exams.<\/p>\n
However, against all my good judgement, something made me say yes.<\/p>\n
That something, it turned out, was Fred*. A mutual friend of Stella\u2019s, he\u2019d also been wooed by the promise of a fun night out.<\/p>\n
Though I initially didn\u2019t find him particularly handsome, my opinion of him grew fonder as the evening wore on. He was witty and readily embraced being the butt of his own joke in a way that many men were deathly afraid of.<\/p>\n
When, at the end of the night he asked for my Notes app to jot his number down, I readily agreed.<\/p>\n
Although I was casually seeing someone at the time, I didn\u2019t see the harm in adding Fred to my contacts.<\/p>\n
Except, over the ensuing weeks, amidst university stress, I admit I forgot to reach out to him. He\u2019d mostly faded from memory until he reached out to me about a year later, completely out of the blue.<\/p>\n
It turns out he\u2019d got my number from Stella, and was dead keen on asking me out for some coffee. I liked coffee and the idea of going on a date with him, so I said yes.<\/p>\n
And, for the first half-hour of the date, we got on like a house on fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was even funnier than I\u2019d remembered and, though I wouldn\u2019t go so far as to say I was beginning to fancy him, I definitely wouldn\u2019t have said no to a second date.<\/p>\n
Platform is the home of Metro.co.uk’s first-person and opinion pieces, devoted to giving a platform to underheard and underrepresented voices in the media. <\/strong><\/p>\n Find some of our best reads of the week below:<\/p>\n Sex columnist Almara Abgarian offers these handy tips to people who have no idea how to please a woman.<\/p>\n This is how to save thousands of pounds by making one small lifestyle change, according to Zara Canfield.<\/p>\n What do you do if your mum thinks she’s invited to your hen do, but you don’t actually want her there? Columnist Alison Rios McCrone has the answer.<\/p>\n Rape survivor Ellie Wilson recalls what it was like for jury members not to believe her \u2013 even though she’d recorded a confession on tape.<\/p>\n That was, of course, until our date started to go completely off the rails.<\/p>\n \u2018So,\u2019 he leant forward after we\u2019d exchanged the pleasantries of a long-belated catch-up. \u2018Is Stella seeing someone?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Not at the moment, no,\u2019 I responded \u2013 thinking my best friend\u2019s relationship status was a strange topic of conversation for a date.<\/p>\n I tried to redirect the discussion to something we\u2019d cackled over a few times before: stupid antics our dogs got up to.<\/p>\n However, like a hound on the hunt, he was not to be swayed. \u2018Do you think she likes Robert*?\u2019 he pressed.<\/p>\n \u2018I\u2019ve no idea,\u2019 I answered, confused \u2013 wondering what it had to do with me. \u2018Maybe you should ask her yourself?\u2019<\/p>\n Foolishly, I believed that to be the end of it. Well, it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n He spent the rest of our 90 minute date attempting to badger me into revealing secrets about Stella\u2019s dating life, bemoaning the fact she\u2019d never agreed to go on a date with him. The latter was not for want of trying, apparently.<\/p>\n She was, he confessed after a period of tight-lipped silence from me, one of his crushes.<\/p>\n Wait a minute, I thought. One of his crushes? Well, why ask me out then?<\/p>\n I attribute my decision to not immediately march out to the same shock response found in deer that freeze in the middle of the road when confronted by a pair of headlights.<\/p>\n And that was how I remained \u2013 sipping my coffee in a state of utter bewilderment until a polite enough lull in the conversation appeared, enabling me to dash off.<\/p>\n Looking back on things, I think I\u2019d have been more upset if I hadn\u2019t been in a daze.<\/p>\n It was actually the next day, when things had started to feel a bit more real, that I remember feeling annoyed at how he\u2019d wasted my time.<\/p>\n I thought my best friend\u2019s relationship status was a strange topic of conversation for a date<\/p>\n Had he approached me with an honest request to help set him up with my best friend instead, I\u2019d have been more than happy to oblige.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was the unnecessary subterfuge that made me reevaluate wanting to take him seriously, even as a potential friend \u2013 and making me certain that I was never going to hook him up with Stella.<\/p>\n While I told Stella the whole story at the same bar where I first met Fred, I muted our WhatsApp chat. Firmly convinced that I\u2019d heard the last of him.<\/p>\n Well\u2026 once again, I was proved wrong.<\/p>\n A few weeks later, he texted me a chirpy request for a second go. Unfortunately, my desire for a repeat performance had withered to a husk during our initial date.<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t willing to be rude and ghost him, even though he deserved it \u2013 but I couldn\u2019t quite muster up the courage to tell him that I wasn\u2019t interested in talking to him, either. So, our chats limped along for several months.<\/p>\n When the death knoll finally rang and our conversation dried up, I was relieved to be able to bury our messages in the cemetery of chats that had long overstayed their welcome.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been three years since then and much has changed. I\u2019ve got a stable partner who\u2019s unafraid to speak his mind and, somewhere along the way, I picked up the backbone to do the same.<\/p>\n I\u2019d like to think that, wherever in the world he is, Fred has also had a similar glow-up and can now be fully transparent with his potential dates, too.<\/p>\n Stella was better off without him, anyway.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/metro.co.uk\/wp-content\/themes\/metro-parent\/img\/fallback.png\")
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